Diviac Unveils New Online Dive Logbook At DEMA Show 2013

A new online dive logbook is being unveiled this week at the 2013 DEMA Show in Orlando.

Diviac.com (short for “Dive Maniac”) is the “next evolution of the digital logbook,” according to company founder and CEO Joel Perrenoud.

“It takes the best of what’s available on the web digitally and it combines it with a social network for divers and a trip adviser for divers,” Perrenoud told DeeperBlue.com on the eve of the product’s official unveiling.

Diviac is a cloud-based logbook, allowing the diver to access his or her dive history via smartphone, tablet or computer. It also boasts a database of 14,000 fish, giving the diver the ability to identify and feature a specific fish on an individual diver’s logbook.

“You’ve got some virtual fish cards, you’ve got an A-Z search, family tree, many ways you can find your fish, attach it to your dive file and if you do this on a regular basis you just go to My Tracker you can see on a global map where you’ve seen them, the year, and share them with your friends,” Perrenoud said.

In addition, because Diviac is in the cloud, it allows divers to share data between each other, he added:

“So for example, I dive a lot with my wife. When I fill in my log, at the end of the process i basically press the validate button, ask her to digitally validate my log, and she has the option to copy it into her logbook. So instead of her filling out the whole data again, she gets everything that I filled in, she can add things that are specific to her, like the dive profile from her dive computer or any specific comments she needs to add.”

That sharing feature is also something Diviac is offering dive instructors, according to Perrenoud:

“Dive instructors can share not only with their buddies but also all their students. They can fill in their log, and say, ‘Hey, instead of asking me what the name of the dive site was, what was that fish, I’ll put it in and you guys can all put it into your dive logs.”

Consequently, those students’ logbooks all become digitally validated because their data came from their instructor, he added.

Another capability Diviac boasts is that diver centers and instructors can earn commissions by referring their students, according to Perrenoud:

“Dive centers can actually re-sell Diviac, so it’s free for them, and anybody who buys it through them, they get a commission. So instead of selling a paper logbook, if they like it, they can Refer their students, students sign up for s 30-day trial, they become paying customers and the instructor gets a commission.”

Dive centers can also connect with their students in a way that allows them to build repeat business, Perrenoud said, “because every time a dive center promotes Diviac to their students, the students will get their logo on their Diviac-specific logbook, and they will become a follower of that company in the system. Which means, like in Facebook, after that the company can send promotions like winter specials, etc.”

Diviac has been in development for the last 11 months, and the official launch takes place on Thursday, November 7 at DEMA Show 2013.

John Liang is the News Editor at DeeperBlue.com. He first got the diving bug while in High School in Cairo, Egypt, where he earned his PADI Open Water Diver certification in the Red Sea off the Sinai Peninsula. Since then, John has dived in a volcanic lake in Guatemala, among white-tipped sharks off the Pacific Coast of Costa Rica, and other places including a pool in Las Vegas helping to break the world record for the largest underwater press conference.